9 ms·

We're Fighting the Feds Over Your Email

95 points by jcabala 12y ago

codazoda 12y ago
Paywall? I'm out.
- lisper 12y ago
  You might want to reconsider posting comments like that. You may think you're making a principled stand against the evils of paywalls (aside: how do you expect online publications to stay in business?) but in fact all you're doing is advertising the fact that you're either too lazy or too stupid to take the trivial steps required to get around one.
  - josefresco 12y ago
    "too lazy or too stupid to take the trivial steps required to get around one" Or maybe he just doesn't want to? You know, on principle? Even skirting the paywall, you're boosting the WSJ's viewership stats which in turn, helps them sell more advertising/contributes to their "value".
    - lisper 12y ago
      > you're boosting the WSJ's viewership stats That would be the case whether or not they had a paywall.
      - josefresco 12y ago
        Which is my point... maybe the parent commenter does not want to do this - instead of being either lazy or stupid as suggested.
        lisper 12y ago
        No, because he specifically said he was opting out because of the paywall, not because it was the WSJ.
  - nfoz 12y ago
    I appreciated the comment because I do not want to bother navigating to a paywall'd page. And I'd be happy if these publications didn't stay in business.
    - lisper 12y ago
      What do you mean by "these publications"? Do you want any on-line publications to stay in business, and if so, how do you expect them to support themselves?
      - nfoz 12y ago
        Publications that use "pay-wall" websites. It's antagonistic to the type of web I want to support. I eagerly contribute to online publications that use other types of business-models: wikipedia, democracynow, TVO, individuals with high-quality blogs, etc. Paying a for-profit company to do work is not a moral good, it's not a charity. If they can't stay in business, that's hardly my problem. If they want to be a non-profit or charity, then I'd be more inclined to contribute, and that structure might help them produce a higher-quality work anyway.
waqf 12y ago
Non-paywalled version: http://stream.wsj.com/story/latest-headlines/SS-2-63399/SS-2-592311/ http://stream.wsj.com/story/latest-headlines/SS-2-63399/SS-2...
- thinkling 12y ago
  That link didn't get me to the full text of the article, but searching for the headline on Google gets me through.
  - SchizoDuckie 12y ago
    FUCKING annoying. Apparently they check the referer header. Mandatory link for lazy people: https://www.google.com/?q=We%27re+Fighting+the+Feds+Over+Your+Email https://www.google.com/?q=We%27re+Fighting+the+Feds+Over+You... (forget about "i'm feeling lucky", that doesnt work, hit search.)
    - FBT 12y ago
      Alternative link for lazy people, which gets you directly to the article's content: https://archive.today/8NKco https://archive.today/8NKco
    - hubtree 12y ago
      thanks
- Hilyin 12y ago
  full text http://pastebin.com/m3WYMZiZ http://pastebin.com/m3WYMZiZ
panarky 12y ago
Relevant excerpts: Microsoft believes you own emails stored in the cloud, and that they have the same privacy protection as paper letters sent by mail... The U.S. government can obtain emails only subject to the full legal protections of the Constitution's Fourth Amendment... A search warrant cannot reach beyond U.S. shores... [The US government] argues that your emails become the business records of a cloud provider. Because business records have a lower level of legal protection, the government claims that it can use its broader authority to reach emails stored anywhere in the world.
- lisper 12y ago
  > your emails become the business records of a cloud provider That is simply ridiculous. Email stored by a cloud provider isn't a business record of the provider any more than the contents of a physical letter stored in a rented mail box is a business record of the box provider.
  - 616c 12y ago
    And soon they will argue that your mail is not your mail, and subject to legal protection, when it is in any USPS facility because it is government assets until it touches your mailbox. Granted, they already track all metadata without opening it (if you believe that). This is attrocious. I come from a family of attorneys and I have told them I lost all respect for the system in which they operate, and Jeffersonian calls to refresh the tree of liberty have started to seem very real and urgent these days. In short, fuck these animals. I hope they choke.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    A physical letter in a rented mailbox is also generally not data-mined for the commercial purposes of the service provider. I think cloud companies essentially want the 4th amendment benefits of treating the cloud like real world private areas (e.g. bank lock boxes), without any of the obligations that come along with that. The "reasonable expectation of privacy" in things like safe deposit boxes or storage units is based on the actual fact that service providers generally do not and cannot access the contents of those rented spaces. To apply that same reasoning to data stored in the cloud, we have to indulge in the fiction that various bots and sysops cannot in fact access that data, and do not routinely do so. That said, I think the cloud folks are ultimately going to win, on the basis of Riley v. California (which is noted in Brad Smith's op-ed). I think Riley is technologically ignorant in glossing over technical distinctions between local and cloud storage that are relevant to privacy, but it all but says the cloud is protected under the 4th amendment. I don't know what's left to fight over.
higherpurpose 12y ago
If Microsoft was serious about this, they'd also offer end-to-end encryption for their e-mails (open source protocol, otherwise they shouldn't bother). But because they aren't doing this, it just shows they are more concerned about not losing business overseas than "fighting for your e-mail".
- TheCraiggers 12y ago
  I'm no longer sure that is enough. Considering what happened to Lavabit, just offering end-to-end encryption is only going to work until the government decides they want what you have hidden. I doubt that Microsoft will put up as much of a fight, or take the high road out, like the Lavabit founder did. Fighting them on the legal front to stop such practices from starting may well be the best option right now. Even though Microsoft may be doing this for business reasons, it'll still help everyone.
  - morsch 12y ago
    Lavabit wasn't end-to-end encrypted.
  - Kalium 12y ago
    If memory serves, the feds had probable cause and a warrant when they want after Lavabit. Lavabit tried to fight it. Lavabit lost. So they shut down instead and tried to spin it as the feds shutting them down.
    - me1010 12y ago
      I believe they were told to hand over the SSL private key. I'm not sure everyone using the Lavabit service was a criminal... So, my thought is that probable cause for handing over the master key to the hotel should be a bit more than probable cause to hand over the room key...
      - Kalium 12y ago
        That's my understanding as well. Unfortunately, Lavabit used one SSL certificate for every incoming user, rendering it impossible to use anything lesser. So to continue your analogy, the hotel only had one key - the master.
diafygi 12y ago
So where is the line on the governments position? If you use AWS, is all the data (S3, EC2 filesystems, RDS data+backups, etc.) now a business record of Amazon? What about renting dedicated servers at your local datacenter? You're basically renting bare hardware at that point, but the hard drives are still technically owned by the datacenter. Is the data on those hard drives business records of the datacenter? Not being able separate the owner of the hardware and the owner of the data on the hardware seems like it would have a ton of modern consequences. EDIT: Here's a fun thought experiment. Say I bought a license to analyze some music dataset from a record label. That license requires that can't share the music data with anyone. When I upload the dataset to S3 to run my Elastic Map Reduce script on it, did I just violate my license because that data is now a business record of Amazon?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
pessimizer 12y ago
Here's a link that will work: http://news.google.com/news/url?sr=1&ct2=us%2F1_0_s_0_1_a&sa=t&usg=AFQjCNGHmh4nS7zyq9kBFT7pBItMbiUSyg&cid=52778571064969&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fbrad-smith-were-fighting-the-feds-over-your-email-1406674616%3Fmod%3D_newsreel_4&ei=USvZU4mRMeOswQHtjoCYCQ&rt=SECTION&vm=STANDARD&bvm=section&did=-3008745151690388525&sid=-1639847235772389775 http://news.google.com/news/url?sr=1&ct2=us%2F1_0_s_0_1_a&sa...
- CamperBob2 12y ago
  No good here, article is still paywalled. Why does Google even bother indexing the WSJ?
AJ007 12y ago
It is a lose-lose case for the US. If they win the case, other countries say sorry you can't do business here. We already have seen countries such as Brazil and Russia make moves to requiring companies to securely store user's data in country. This makes a good argument for open source software development and decoupling storage. Software-as-a-service may end up being Commodity-as-a-service. Terrible for enterprises like Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM who want to be global "cloud" providers.
mkal_tsr 12y ago
> The government seeks to sidestep these rules, asserting that emails you store in the cloud cease to belong exclusively to you. In court filings, it argues that your emails become the business records of a cloud provider. So, how long until Dropbox contents are just a matter of business records?
- tartuffe78 12y ago
  I would guess back when Dropbox passed 10,000 users
junto 12y ago
I think Microsoft are right here and I'm glad that they are willing to take this on. Of is in their interests to show that their customers' email privacy is afforded the same level of protection that normal mail does.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
al2o3cr 12y ago
"Microsoft believes you own emails stored in the cloud, and that they have the same privacy protection as paper letters sent by mail" Clarification: Microsoft now believes this (or claims to). They had no problem handing PRISM the keys to the kingdom while it was still secret. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-c...
- spectre256 12y ago
  While it's understandable to feel down about the fact that Microsoft used to feel it was ok to hand over emails, there's a more positive way to look at it: this article is strong evidence that the public opinion regarding online privacy has changed such that, were Microsoft to give up these emails, it's own business would suffer negatively. It's not a signal of the end of our battle for privacy, but it's something.
ak217 12y ago
This is the same Microsoft that ran ads against Google based on the claim that unlike Google's ad algorithms, they don't look at your email, then turned around and looked at a user's email when they found out that a Microsoft employee sent confidential information to that account. (http://www.techrepublic.com/article/microsoft-issues-mea-culpa-in-wake-of-hotmail-email-probe-seeks-to-restore-customer-trust/ http://www.techrepublic.com/article/microsoft-issues-mea-cul...). It's also the same Microsoft that was found to have provided the greatest aid to the NSA in accommodating their mass wiretap requests (compared to Yahoo, Google, and other webmail providers). The irony is delicious. To put it very mildly, I question Microsoft's integrity and wouldn't trust them with my data. Want to showcase a hero who actually went to great lengths to fight the feds over your email? Try Ladar Levison.

95 points by jcabala 12y ago

codazoda 12y ago

Paywall? I'm out.

lisper 12y ago
You might want to reconsider posting comments like that. You may think you're making a principled stand against the evils of paywalls (aside: how do you expect online publications to stay in business?) but in fact all you're doing is advertising the fact that you're either too lazy or too stupid to take the trivial steps required to get around one.
- josefresco 12y ago
  "too lazy or too stupid to take the trivial steps required to get around one" Or maybe he just doesn't want to? You know, on principle? Even skirting the paywall, you're boosting the WSJ's viewership stats which in turn, helps them sell more advertising/contributes to their "value".
  - lisper 12y ago
    > you're boosting the WSJ's viewership stats That would be the case whether or not they had a paywall.
    - josefresco 12y ago
      Which is my point... maybe the parent commenter does not want to do this - instead of being either lazy or stupid as suggested.
      - lisper 12y ago
        No, because he specifically said he was opting out because of the paywall, not because it was the WSJ.
- nfoz 12y ago
  I appreciated the comment because I do not want to bother navigating to a paywall'd page. And I'd be happy if these publications didn't stay in business.
  - lisper 12y ago
    What do you mean by "these publications"? Do you want any on-line publications to stay in business, and if so, how do you expect them to support themselves?
    - nfoz 12y ago
      Publications that use "pay-wall" websites. It's antagonistic to the type of web I want to support. I eagerly contribute to online publications that use other types of business-models: wikipedia, democracynow, TVO, individuals with high-quality blogs, etc. Paying a for-profit company to do work is not a moral good, it's not a charity. If they can't stay in business, that's hardly my problem. If they want to be a non-profit or charity, then I'd be more inclined to contribute, and that structure might help them produce a higher-quality work anyway.

waqf 12y ago

Non-paywalled version: http://stream.wsj.com/story/latest-headlines/SS-2-63399/SS-2-592311/ http://stream.wsj.com/story/latest-headlines/SS-2-63399/SS-2...

thinkling 12y ago
That link didn't get me to the full text of the article, but searching for the headline on Google gets me through.
- SchizoDuckie 12y ago
  FUCKING annoying. Apparently they check the referer header. Mandatory link for lazy people: https://www.google.com/?q=We%27re+Fighting+the+Feds+Over+Your+Email https://www.google.com/?q=We%27re+Fighting+the+Feds+Over+You... (forget about "i'm feeling lucky", that doesnt work, hit search.)
  - FBT 12y ago
    Alternative link for lazy people, which gets you directly to the article's content: https://archive.today/8NKco https://archive.today/8NKco
  - hubtree 12y ago
    thanks
Hilyin 12y ago
full text http://pastebin.com/m3WYMZiZ http://pastebin.com/m3WYMZiZ

panarky 12y ago

Relevant excerpts: Microsoft believes you own emails stored in the cloud, and that they have the same privacy protection as paper letters sent by mail... The U.S. government can obtain emails only subject to the full legal protections of the Constitution's Fourth Amendment... A search warrant cannot reach beyond U.S. shores... [The US government] argues that your emails become the business records of a cloud provider. Because business records have a lower level of legal protection, the government claims that it can use its broader authority to reach emails stored anywhere in the world.

lisper 12y ago
> your emails become the business records of a cloud provider That is simply ridiculous. Email stored by a cloud provider isn't a business record of the provider any more than the contents of a physical letter stored in a rented mail box is a business record of the box provider.
- 616c 12y ago
  And soon they will argue that your mail is not your mail, and subject to legal protection, when it is in any USPS facility because it is government assets until it touches your mailbox. Granted, they already track all metadata without opening it (if you believe that). This is attrocious. I come from a family of attorneys and I have told them I lost all respect for the system in which they operate, and Jeffersonian calls to refresh the tree of liberty have started to seem very real and urgent these days. In short, fuck these animals. I hope they choke.
- rayiner 12y ago
  A physical letter in a rented mailbox is also generally not data-mined for the commercial purposes of the service provider. I think cloud companies essentially want the 4th amendment benefits of treating the cloud like real world private areas (e.g. bank lock boxes), without any of the obligations that come along with that. The "reasonable expectation of privacy" in things like safe deposit boxes or storage units is based on the actual fact that service providers generally do not and cannot access the contents of those rented spaces. To apply that same reasoning to data stored in the cloud, we have to indulge in the fiction that various bots and sysops cannot in fact access that data, and do not routinely do so. That said, I think the cloud folks are ultimately going to win, on the basis of Riley v. California (which is noted in Brad Smith's op-ed). I think Riley is technologically ignorant in glossing over technical distinctions between local and cloud storage that are relevant to privacy, but it all but says the cloud is protected under the 4th amendment. I don't know what's left to fight over.

higherpurpose 12y ago

If Microsoft was serious about this, they'd also offer end-to-end encryption for their e-mails (open source protocol, otherwise they shouldn't bother). But because they aren't doing this, it just shows they are more concerned about not losing business overseas than "fighting for your e-mail".

TheCraiggers 12y ago
I'm no longer sure that is enough. Considering what happened to Lavabit, just offering end-to-end encryption is only going to work until the government decides they want what you have hidden. I doubt that Microsoft will put up as much of a fight, or take the high road out, like the Lavabit founder did. Fighting them on the legal front to stop such practices from starting may well be the best option right now. Even though Microsoft may be doing this for business reasons, it'll still help everyone.
- morsch 12y ago
  Lavabit wasn't end-to-end encrypted.
- Kalium 12y ago
  If memory serves, the feds had probable cause and a warrant when they want after Lavabit. Lavabit tried to fight it. Lavabit lost. So they shut down instead and tried to spin it as the feds shutting them down.
  - me1010 12y ago
    I believe they were told to hand over the SSL private key. I'm not sure everyone using the Lavabit service was a criminal... So, my thought is that probable cause for handing over the master key to the hotel should be a bit more than probable cause to hand over the room key...
    - Kalium 12y ago
      That's my understanding as well. Unfortunately, Lavabit used one SSL certificate for every incoming user, rendering it impossible to use anything lesser. So to continue your analogy, the hotel only had one key - the master.

diafygi 12y ago

So where is the line on the governments position? If you use AWS, is all the data (S3, EC2 filesystems, RDS data+backups, etc.) now a business record of Amazon? What about renting dedicated servers at your local datacenter? You're basically renting bare hardware at that point, but the hard drives are still technically owned by the datacenter. Is the data on those hard drives business records of the datacenter? Not being able separate the owner of the hardware and the owner of the data on the hardware seems like it would have a ton of modern consequences. EDIT: Here's a fun thought experiment. Say I bought a license to analyze some music dataset from a record label. That license requires that can't share the music data with anyone. When I upload the dataset to S3 to run my Elastic Map Reduce script on it, did I just violate my license because that data is now a business record of Amazon?

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

pessimizer 12y ago

Here's a link that will work: http://news.google.com/news/url?sr=1&ct2=us%2F1_0_s_0_1_a&sa=t&usg=AFQjCNGHmh4nS7zyq9kBFT7pBItMbiUSyg&cid=52778571064969&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fbrad-smith-were-fighting-the-feds-over-your-email-1406674616%3Fmod%3D_newsreel_4&ei=USvZU4mRMeOswQHtjoCYCQ&rt=SECTION&vm=STANDARD&bvm=section&did=-3008745151690388525&sid=-1639847235772389775 http://news.google.com/news/url?sr=1&ct2=us%2F1_0_s_0_1_a&sa...

CamperBob2 12y ago
No good here, article is still paywalled. Why does Google even bother indexing the WSJ?

AJ007 12y ago

It is a lose-lose case for the US. If they win the case, other countries say sorry you can't do business here. We already have seen countries such as Brazil and Russia make moves to requiring companies to securely store user's data in country. This makes a good argument for open source software development and decoupling storage. Software-as-a-service may end up being Commodity-as-a-service. Terrible for enterprises like Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM who want to be global "cloud" providers.

mkal_tsr 12y ago

> The government seeks to sidestep these rules, asserting that emails you store in the cloud cease to belong exclusively to you. In court filings, it argues that your emails become the business records of a cloud provider. So, how long until Dropbox contents are just a matter of business records?

tartuffe78 12y ago
I would guess back when Dropbox passed 10,000 users

junto 12y ago

I think Microsoft are right here and I'm glad that they are willing to take this on. Of is in their interests to show that their customers' email privacy is afforded the same level of protection that normal mail does.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

al2o3cr 12y ago

"Microsoft believes you own emails stored in the cloud, and that they have the same privacy protection as paper letters sent by mail" Clarification: Microsoft now believes this (or claims to). They had no problem handing PRISM the keys to the kingdom while it was still secret. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-c...

spectre256 12y ago
While it's understandable to feel down about the fact that Microsoft used to feel it was ok to hand over emails, there's a more positive way to look at it: this article is strong evidence that the public opinion regarding online privacy has changed such that, were Microsoft to give up these emails, it's own business would suffer negatively. It's not a signal of the end of our battle for privacy, but it's something.

ak217 12y ago

This is the same Microsoft that ran ads against Google based on the claim that unlike Google's ad algorithms, they don't look at your email, then turned around and looked at a user's email when they found out that a Microsoft employee sent confidential information to that account. (http://www.techrepublic.com/article/microsoft-issues-mea-culpa-in-wake-of-hotmail-email-probe-seeks-to-restore-customer-trust/ http://www.techrepublic.com/article/microsoft-issues-mea-cul...). It's also the same Microsoft that was found to have provided the greatest aid to the NSA in accommodating their mass wiretap requests (compared to Yahoo, Google, and other webmail providers). The irony is delicious. To put it very mildly, I question Microsoft's integrity and wouldn't trust them with my data. Want to showcase a hero who actually went to great lengths to fight the feds over your email? Try Ladar Levison.